Bowl barrow forming part of Bratley Plain round barrow cemetery

A Scheduled Monument in Ellingham, Harbridge and Ibsley, Hampshire

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Details

This monument includes a bowl barrow forming part of Bratley Plain round
barrow cemetery situated on lowland heath overlooking Backley Bottom. The
barrow mound measures 8m in diameter and stands up to 0.7m high. A hollow in
the centre of the mound suggests previous robbing or partial excavation.
Surrounding the mound is a ditch from which material was quarried during the
construction of the barrow. This has become partly infilled over the years
but survives as a slight earthwork 1.5m wide and 0.2m deep around the northern
half of the barrow and as a buried feature elsewhere.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Round barrow cemeteries date to the Bronze Age (c.2000-700 BC). They comprise
closely-spaced groups of up to 30 round barrows - rubble or earthen mounds
covering single or multiple burials. Most cemeteries developed over a
considerable period of time, often many centuries, and in some cases acted as
a focus for burials as late as the early medieval period. They exhibit
considerable diversity of burial rite, plan and form, frequently including
several different types of round barrow, occasionally associated with earlier
long barrows. Where large scale investigation has been undertaken around them,
contemporary or later "flat" burials between the barrow mounds have often been
revealed. Round barrow cemeteries occur across most of lowland Britain, with a
marked concentration in Wessex. In some cases, they are clustered around other
important contemporary monuments such as henges. Often occupying prominent
locations, they are a major historic element in the modern landscape, whilst
their diversity and their longevity as a monument type provide important
information on the variety of beliefs and social organisation amongst early
prehistoric communities. They are particularly representative of their period
and a substantial proportion of surviving or partly-surviving examples are
considered worthy of protection.

The Bratley Plain round barrow cemetery contains a significantly large number
of small undisturbed barrows. The survival of so many small barrows within a
cemetery is a particularly uncommon phenomenon in southern England. Although
some of the larger mounds have been partially disturbed, all the barrows
retain undisturbed remains and the cemetery as a whole has considerable
archaeological potential. The New Forest region is known to have been
important in terms of lowland Bronze Age occupation and a considerable amount
of archaeological evidence has survived because of a lack of agricultural
activity, the result of later climatic deterioration, development of heath and
the establishment of a Royal Forest.

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